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Kniphofia thomsonii (Alpine Poker) - This attractive evergreen perennial with narrow 2 to 3 feet long leaves and an inflorescence spike reaching to 5 ft tall. Unlike the typical clumping habit of most other Kniphofia, it spreads wide on short rhizomes to become a patch several feet wide. The narrow keel-shaped leaves are a glaucous blue green and the variously shades of inch long orange flowers, from a dark orange-red in bud to a pale tangerine color at maturity, are produced through much of the year with a peak in spring but seemingly never out of bloom here in Santa Barbara. These flowers are reminiscent more of an aloe in that they are widely scattered (lax) on the last 18 inches of the 3-to-5-foot inflorescence.
Plant in full to part sun where it favors a rich damp soil, but can also grow in moderately dry situations so long as it gets some summer irrigation. Reported as hardy to around 0-5°F and useful in USDA Zone 7 and above.
Kniphofia thomsonii is an East African species of Kniphofia that occurs up to about 13,000 ft on Mount Kilimanjaro. It is the only alpine growing plant in the genus and is also the only tropical species of Kniphofia widely cultivated. The native range of this species is northern Tanzania and the highlands of Kenya into Uganda and Zaire. The name Kniphofia honors Johann Hieronymus Kniphof (1704 -1763), a German physician and botanist. This plant was described by the English botanist John Gilbert Baker in 1885 as Kniphofia thomsonii to honor the collector that sent the plant collected on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to Baker at Kew. Baker only listed this collector with the surname of "Thomson", but it is a fair bet that it was Harry Thomson, who the year prior in 1884 led the Royal Geographic Society & British Association expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro.
We received this plant in June 2000 from Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm & Gardens, who had received it 10 years earlier labeled Kniphofia thomsonii var. snowdenii from the Alpine Garden Society Seed Exchange in the United Kingdom. Since that time, it has been determined that this plant is actually the plant originally described by Baker in 1885 as Kniphofia thomsonii var. thomsonii and not the variety snowdenii. John Grimshaw, garden writer and Director of Yorkshire Arboretum wrote about this confusion in the Alpine List in 1996, noting then that the plant long grown as Kniphofia thomsonii var. snowdenii was actually Kniphofia thomsonii and that true var. snowdenii was a more tender plant that had distinctly pubescent flowers, which the plants we grow do not have. This observation was also expressed by Robert Grant-Downton in 1997 in "Notes on Kniphofia thomsonii in cultivation and in the wild" in The New Plantsman 4(3): 148–156, noting that "Plants called K. snowdenii or var. snowdenii in cultivation today are usually found in fact to be var. thomsonii". Other previously used names for this taxon include Kniphofia goetzei Engl., Kniphofia rogersii Bruce and K Kniphofia subalpina Chiov.
We offered this great plant continually since first selling it in 2001 up until the day we closed our nursery in 2025. It is one of our favorite plants in the genus!
Information displayed on this page about Kniphofia thomsonii is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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